In their heads, children often have ideas of bizarre objects which, most of the time, remain in a state of pure virtuality. During the first confinement, my eldest son, can be inspired by the cartoon The Octonauts or by the image of a caregiver equipped with a Decathlon diving mask, had had the project of manufacturing “a functioning helmet with gills for breathing underwater”. As for my youngest son, around the same time, he had the ambition to build a “toilet roll monster”. “Yeah, that’s great! »usually retorts the parent, certain that these fads will join the limbo of the proto-industry even before having passed the stage of the plan.
Because, yes, making a project a reality takes time, and children quickly move on to something else. Netflix therefore had the brilliant idea of having some of these visions promised to oblivion realized by a group of five American handymen with the look of bikers.
On the edge of “do it yourself”
Thick beards, tattoos, caps for duck hunting: a view from afar, the miniseries team The Craftsmen of Fun (Making Fun, across the Atlantic) would be almost scary. Figurehead of the show, Jimmy DiResta, 54, is a maker renowned who has long earned his living by making objects in New York, before settling in the vast farm where these experiments will take place on the borders of do-it-yourself. One of the main comic springs of the show has to do with the character’s hypergrumpy side, which is reminiscent of the Clint Eastwood of Gran Torino. “To be honest, I don’t really like kids,” admits Jimmy moreover in the first episode, coming to accredit the thesis according to which the declared misanthropes are often – in reality – scowling humanists.
“We will have all the means at our disposal to give life to the most stupid idea that they will have invented”, specifies the one that the children affectionately call “Mr Grumpy”. Faced with the team of mocking handymen lined up in a row of onions, the young candidates then present their requests in video: the “culbuto-pig”the “catapult that throws cat droppings”, “roller coaster from my roof to the garden”, “the fart humidifier that puts butts in a bottle to vaporize them”, “a suit that can go into space and goes faster than light”, “a pirate pizza cannon”… It almost looks like start-ups at the CES show in Las Vegas.
Extraordinary imaginary
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